Most educators know that helping adolescents build social emotional-learning (SEL) skills is an essential component of their growth and development. What often becomes a challenge, however, is how to go about teaching those skills in a meaningful way—and in ways that integrate easily into the daily lives of students and the classroom.
As part of my role as the middle school director of studies, I set out to develop a consistent and intentional SEL program that would work for educators and students alike at Charlotte Country Day School (NC). I collaborated with Janani Buford, director of counseling, to create an advisory program that incorporates a monthly approach to introduce and reinforce key lessons and activities.
What Does the Program Look Like?
The advisory program provides students with a group of nine to 12 of their peers in the same grade level who meet daily for at least 15 minutes during an advisory class period. All full-time teachers, other than a few that also hold administrative roles, serve as advisors in the program. Students are often placed with advisors who are also one of their teachers. This daily contact time allows advisors to build relationships with the students and create an environment where students feel comfortable sharing their ideas and feelings.
Advisors serve as a trusted adult who advocates for students, create a consistent point of contact between families and the school, and help students build a foundation for academic and social success. This approach is inspired by our school culture and what we have found to work best for our students.
We identified eight wide-ranging topics we wanted to include throughout the year, so we designed monthly themes to incorporate those topics and to help inform individual lessons.
We start the school year by presenting the yearlong SEL overview to advisors. For each month, we created at least two lessons that all teachers would be required to implement, such as creating an advisory motto, and additional lessons that teachers could choose from based on their students’ needs. I also share with the teachers SEL picture books with corresponding activities that support SEL instruction. I keep these books in my office and encourage teachers to borrow them throughout the year.
August and September: Goal-Setting
The lessons for the start of the year are designed with the understanding that students within each advisory group are only beginning to get to know each other and will need time to build relationships with their advisor and peers before diving into more personal topics.
Students set extracurricular, academic, social, and personal goals, envision what it will look like when they meet these goals, and brainstorm ideas for specific actions they can take to help them achieve these goals. They also design and develop organizational strategies and study skills to practice and use throughout the year.
October: Self-Awareness
These lessons begin by unifying the advisory group around a common goal of creating an advisory motto. Students work together to write a phrase that encapsulates the values they hope will guide and inspire their advisory throughout the year. Then they design a poster with their motto and how they will work together toward fulfilling it.
To helps students learn how to consider the cause and effect of their actions, we created an activity called the feelings skit, in which we place students in small groups and give them a list of feelings words. Students then work in groups to create skits that illustrate the cause and effects of their feelings. We also talk about using emojis, examining tone and body language, and the differences between in person and digital communication.
November: Gratitude
Centered around the idea of Thanksgiving, students take time to thank others and reflect on what they are grateful for. In one activity, students work in small groups to list things they are grateful for that correspond to each letter of the alphabet and then share aloud with each other during advisory.
December: Mindfulness
This is a time when we have students practice various forms of mindfulness and meditation, including mindful coloring, walking, and breathing exercises.
January: Growth Mindset
Students start the new calendar year with a focus on growth mindset and activities that encourage them to celebrate mistakes and create goals for the second semester. One way students do this is by reflecting on their mistakes from the first half of the school year, what they learned about themselves, and how they can use that experience in the future.
February: Relationship Skills
We help students focus on building new friendships and skills to improve their current friendships with activities that push them a bit beyond their comfort zone.
During Mix-It-Up lunch, advisors in the lunchroom assign students to tables and provide them with discussion questions to encourage conversations. Students are often initially annoyed that they won’t be able to have lunch with their friends, but they usually end up appreciating the opportunity to talk to new people.
In the friendship circles activity, advisors divide students into pairs and instruct them to find five things they have in common. Then two pairs combine to find something all four students have in common and share the commonalities with the group. Finally, they create a list of all the things that everyone in the advisory shares. This list is always much longer than the students think it will be.
March: Decision-Making
Students engage in digital citizenship activities, such as examining their digital footprint, and an intent-versus-impact lesson. For example, “you are excited to hang out with a new friend. You start talking about it in front of some other friends who were not invited. They get quiet and look down.”
After reading each scenario, they examine the intent and impact within those situations by discussing questions such as:
- What are some factors that contribute to how others interpret your actions?
- What could happen to someone’s feelings when the impact is different from the intent?
- How do you feel when you do or say something that was taken differently than you intended?
- How do you feel when you have been hurt and find out the person didn’t mean to hurt you?
- What can you do to help make sure your impact matches your intent?
April: Social Awareness
Students practice community service and spend time learning about and celebrating Earth Day. They decide how they want to work together to help our environment, such as picking up trash outside, making posters to encourage recycling, etc.
May: Celebrating Success
The end of the year is a perfect time to celebrate individual and advisory successes. This is also a great time to revisit and reflect on the goals each advisory makes at the beginning of the year. Some activities include making superlatives for each member of the advisory with an “awards ceremony,” or creating a “quilt” where every student creates paper squares with words and pictures to represent their favorite memories of the year.
Developing social-emotional skills is an essential component of students’ middle school experience, and it’s important for educators to find ways to develop these skills and prepare students for challenges inside and outside the classroom. Much like academics, students need to be taught these skills and have an opportunity to practice them in order to learn and grow.